Reunion Rethink
by LilyGhost
Summary: When Stephanie tags along on a job with Ranger, she winds up feeling satisfied with more than just getting a paid night out.


**All characters, and familiar events mentioned, belong to Janet. The mistakes are mine alone.**

"Well, well, well ... look what the cat horked up. I never thought I'd see _you _at a school reunion, Plum, considering how unliked you were here," Joyce said around a sneer that made her look more like a _skank_pire than usual.

"I'd be happy to never see you or any of your twat-squad again, but Rangeman was hired to provide security for this shit-show, so ..."

"_Soooo _you _had _to come just to keep tabs on him and make sure he won't go home with someone like me," she stated, not questioned.

I felt Ranger's arms pulling me close before I heard the voice that never fails to have me blushing, warming, and internally squealing, all at the same time. I've never been happier to be the woman he wants by his side ... or plastered along his front like I now am.

"Stephanie knows there's not a chance in hell of that _ever _happening," he informed my archenemy. "Not only do I find you and your kind nauseating, home isn't one unless Steph's inside it. I'm not fucking up what I'm lucky to have."

I honestly can't care less what Joyce thinks of me, but the fact that Ranger wanted to provide visual and audio ammunition I can use against her, not only tonight, but for _years _into the future, had me melting as fast as if he'd just kissed me.

"You expect anyone to believe that kind of crap?" Joyce stopped sputtering long enough to cough up.

I turned my head so I could smile up at my guy. "Remember ... you have to use really small words with no emotion behind them to get Joyce to understand what you're saying. Waving a shiny object and a couple singles under her surgically-altered nose, improves the chances of her being able to see anything beyond those overly-inflated boobs she bought last year."

"I don't carry singles and I also don't have the patience to put up with - or listen to - her. I should've known no payment was worth possibly being exposed to her."

"Sounds like someone can't take a woman not throwing themselves at him. Ain't that right, Manoso?" Morelli asked, suddenly sidling up _real_ friendly-like to Joyce.

"Talk about projecting the piece-of-shit guy you are onto others. There's only one woman I want throwing herself at me, and I'm more than happy to catch Stephanie anytime she feels the urge," Ranger answered as my gears started turning.

The pieces clicked faster than Joe could come up with something clever to say to Ranger. "Since you're two-years-older than everybody else here," I pointed out, "what did you promise Trenton's forever-twisted whorenado to get her to agree to let you be her play date tonight? I'm going to kill my mother if she told yours that Ranger and I were going to be here."

"What makes you think _you're _the reason I do _anything_?" He countered.

"Unless _everything _you said was a lie, not just _every other _word, what you've said about, and have called, Joyce in the past led me to believe you didn't want to risk your dick falling off if you slept with her. And children genuinely repulse and terrify her. Since the _only _interest you have in women is getting no-strings sex from them or getting them pregnant and cooking for you, _she's _not who I'd guess you'd be hanging out with."

"You really can't stop thinking about me, can you, Cupcake?"

He smirked in a way that had my hand balling into a fist until Ranger folded his beefy arms across my upper arms and chest. He left them there in order to keep me from acquiring an _'I'm aggravated'_ assault charge. Or could be he just didn't want to put Ella through the trouble of getting blood out of my dress.

"I don't give a crap about you or what you do, Joe. That hasn't changed, nor will it."

"What I find disturbing is the lengths you'll go to just to get near Stephanie ... even risk _that_," Ranger replied, nodding towards Barnyard-breath.

"_Hey!_" Joyce shrieked, offended beyond belief that both men focused on me and totally forgot she existed, despite the hours of effort and jerry-rigging she'd put into her botoxed, re-dyed, and over-painted, image for tonight's performance.

Both Ranger and Joe ignored her, which prompted her to scan me from head to toe with exaggerated disgust, though I know I'm looking pretty good even with minimal prep-time put into my appearance. I let my short, blush-colored dress speak for the both of us with its carefully applied sparkly-enhancers along the low V neckline, plunging back, and mid-thigh hem, plus a deliberate scattering of the same silver shine on the remaining material. Nude, barely-there FMPs finished my look ten minutes after I'd started on it.

I could've gone the tacky route that Joyce had chosen, and strangled my hair into a complicated updo before torturing my lips to twice their normal size with tinted lip-plumper in a less-permanent version of her freely-injected filler. I took a different approach and just left my curls down and only added a little makeup so my almost skin-tone dress wouldn't completely wash me out. What I'd decided to enhance or leave alone made Ranger stand at attention in at least two ways ... and that was all I needed to feel good, even when I knew I'd be coming to the scene of many of my mentally-carried out crimes.

Ranger, of course, just switched out his Rangeman uniform for black dress pants and button down shirt, paired with less beaten-up ass-kicking boots, and he was good to go ... and delicious enough to eat in my opinion. Joe clearly didn't appreciate - or want to acknowledge - the magic Ranger is though.

"_I'm. Not. Here. Because. Of. Stephanie_," Morelli bit out.

"So you tend to frequent school reunions?" Batman fired back. "Doesn't seem like your typical hook-up location ... though you _are _used to taking advantage of females inside and beyond this school's walls."

I could literally see Morelli's blood pressure rising. "I just did what boys do."

"Speaking like someone who was allowed to get away with altering and damaging young girls', followed by young women's, lives."

"I've done _nothing _wrong you self-righteous prick!"

"Is that what your Mommy told you?" Ranger pressed. "I and Stephanie, along with most of the women in this gymnasium, will tell you differently. They'll likely point out what a persistent, persuasive, and then instantly dismissive, dick you were ... and _still are _if I believe what I hear. And I do."

"I can't help it if women want me for longer than I want to spend time with them."

"True," Ranger replied, "but you have the power to leave them alone when they don't want you ... and you still refuse to. Tonight's the perfect example of that to pass along to your superiors."

"Tell him he's wrong, Cupcake," he ordered me.

Wrong move on his part. My eyes narrowed as my spine snapped straight so quickly ... I swear I heard it lock into place. "First off, I'm not _a cupcake. _I'm a _Babe _who can eat cupcakes for breakfast. And I am definitely not someone you can order around. If you'd like to keep your balls where they are currently located, you'll remember that. Second, I think you're not just a dick, but a total asshole for deciding to discuss me plus describe my anatomy on buildings across the Burg, completely ruining senior year for me. So Ranger was very right on that count."

The Man of Mystery gave my body a squeeze for support before he moved his hold from my upper body to a comforting band around my waist. Because of him I was able to get a few things off my chest that have been festering since I'd last been here.

"If I wasn't being tsk-ed and grounded by my mother," I continued, "called a slut by almost every one of my classmates - Barn-butt here being the loudest of them - I was grabbed, harassed, and propositioned, every single day by every a-hole in the school. I couldn't go away to college fast enough just to get away from the ridicule, glares, and whispering, I was subjected to wherever I was ... even at home. You don't have the power to ruin my life, but you did make it really unpleasant for a couple of years in each decade of the three I've been alive. Ranger was in Miami for a little while, then back in Newark, and even _he _managed to hear all about me."

"I'd love to do to you what I envisioned doing years ago after a buddy told me, also with clear fury and disgust, the poem you wrote about a _seventeen_-year-old girl, when you were supposed to be _an adult,_" Ranger added. Being pressed so close to him, I can feel the anger coursing through his veins. "If someone attempted the same with my sisters or my daughter, there wouldn't be any DNA left to identify him with."

"Nice way to admit what a thug and murderer you are," Joe taunted, attempting to turn Ranger's words back on him. "You have a daughter from stupidly knocking someone up. Who are you to judge me?"

"I'd shut your face now before Ranger proves that he _can _murder someone who deserves it ... and get congratulated for it," I advised. "I've learned that I can be a very compelling witness on the stand."

"I manned up and did what was right for both Julie and her mother," my guy shared. "She may not have been planned, but I've never once regretted my daughter. Since you're still clueless on what taking responsibility for your actions looks like, being a man means I take care of those I love and will always put their well-being ahead of everything else, especially my own needs. You should try it some time. It'll cut down on how many excuses your mommy needs to come up with in order to cover your ass."

I caught Ranger's eye and sent him a mental high-five, then added a verbal one to it.

"_No one _regrets Julie," I told him. "Come to think of it, when you moved in with me to be in a better position to catch Scrog ... is when I realized just how well we get along, and how much I enjoy being with you, even when we were constantly bumping elbows in the tiny bathroom and kitchen. You know, Joe, if you came here to be with Joyce - like you two think we'd believe - shouldn't you be busy sucking face with her in a dusty corner somewhere, not killing time trying to piss me or Ranger off? Hmmm, I wonder why you're still standing in front _of us_ but staying away_ from her_?"

"Seems like _you two _are the ones more interested in fighting with me than being stuck alone," Joe said.

I couldn't help it. I laughed so hard, if Mary Lou had been here tonight like she swore to be before the Stankovic home got hit with the 'three-kid-flu', she would've said I came close to wetting my pants ... or wetting my dress in this case.

"You're so far off, Morelli, I'd say it wasn't even funny ... but I admit it's actually _hysterical_. So much so that I think I just pulled a rib laughing at you," I said, rubbing the bone-cage encased in my probably too-tight dress.

Ranger's quick when it comes to the possibility of touching me, and his fingers began massaging my side. "Which rib is potentially injured?"

"The middle one on my left side," I answered, smiling when his fingers did as promised and began rubbing the offended bone ... and all the rest around it. "The _only _reason I'd step foot in this place again is to spend more time with Ranger while he and the guys are trapped here. Choosing to be his date and personal back-watcher in a place I hate, rather than parking my butt on our couch with the Pineapple-Upside-Down-Cake Ella made me and a Ghostbuster's marathon, shows just how much I love - and like sticking close to - Ranger."

Joe didn't look convinced. I normally wouldn't care what he thought, but I was suddenly channeling Teenage Stephanie who needs to stick it to Morelli for everything he's done, and not just to me. According to the law, I can't nail him with a Buick, not again anyway, so I really wanted him to feel rejection clear down to the bowels of his gonads.

"What if I told you that Ranger and I are actually married and just haven't told anyone?" I asked Morelli. "Would you finally believe that he and I are equally in love, and equally obsessed, with each other _then_?"

"Now I _know _you're full of shit. You panic just hearing that someone is getting married, never mind _you _being the one dragged to the altar."

"Could be I just needed the right man to commit to so I wouldn't panic or need to drag anything anymore."

"I don't see any rings," he said, glancing down at our hands.

"_Duh! _You _wouldn't_," I enjoyed saying. "If we wanted to keep our marriage a secret for just he and I to savor the knowledge of, we sure as hell wouldn't advertise it with any rings, especially given Ranger's tendency to spend excessive amounts of money on me, _and _the fact that we were coming to a gossip-hotspot. A diamond iceberg or equator would be the talk of the night within a millisecond."

I had him seriously thinking now. I admit, I could come up with about four-thousand things I'd rather be doing than watching people who made the majority of my school years hell ... giggling, gossiping, and gyrating, in a pathetic attempt to not feel old for one night, but fucking with Morelli's mind is not a bad way to pass some of the time I had left here.

Feeling old isn't a problem I have, since I lean more towards immature eighty-percent of the time I'm awake, which keeps me from falling into the Burg age-trap where you're told to act or dress a certain way in order to be considered '_respectable_'. And to add insult to their injury, releasing what I'd locked up decades ago has me feeling fifteen pounds lighter. Morelli's WTF-look had me smiling again. He really has no friggin' clue if I'm just screwing with him or if I'm dead serious about being legally bound to Batman.

One glance up at Ranger let me know he's thoroughly enjoying this too. His company received a big, fat paycheck while he gets to one-up Morelli a little bit more. A total win-win in his mind. Pissing Joyce off by completely ignoring her whorey-existence is just the Chlamydia-tinged icing on her Gonorrhea-laced cake.

"You're such a bitch," Joyce hissed.

"I do try at times," I told her. "And tonight's one of them."

She turned and literally hoofed it out of the gym without caring - or even looking to see - if Morelli followed. He did, but only after a tense beat where we could tell he was reminding himself that he'll _never _be able to beat Ranger in stares, insults, flying fists, or murder charges. Ranger and I both noticed that he disappeared through the opposite exit than where Barn-butt did, proving us right that he'd only come here to try to annoy us.

"It feels like I've stepped into a time machine or something," I said under my breath to Ranger, when a small crowd crept closer to us and then went silent in anticipation of hearing something juicy. "Like I felt everyday until I graduated ... I can't wait until I'm able to get the hell out of here."

The only difference is ... these days I actually _love _\- not _dread _\- going home at the end of my day.


End file.
